How scoring works
Last updated: 15 October 2026
Every question is worth at most 1,000 points. The score is built from three parts, and almost all of it comes from one thing: how close your pin is.
| Part | Points | What earns it |
|---|---|---|
| Distance | up to 880 | How near the pin is to the real place |
| Speed | up to 50 | Answering within about 12 seconds earns the full bonus; it fades to zero at 90 seconds |
| Wide view | up to 70 | Guessing while the globe is still seen from far away, without zooming in on coastlines first |
Distance
A pin within 60 km of the place counts as exact and earns the full distance score. Beyond that the score falls smoothly. The curve is kind close to the answer and strict far away: for a typical city question a 100 km miss keeps about 99% of the distance points, 500 km about 88%, 1,000 km about 76% and 2,000 km about 56%. At 4,000 km it is about 29%, at 8,000 km about 7%, and on the opposite side of the planet nothing. Being on the right continent always counts for something; being in the right country counts for a lot.
Questions have different tolerances. A single building is judged more tightly than a mountain range. Areas — an empire, an island group, a region — are measured from the edge of the area, not from its centre, so a pin anywhere inside the area scores full distance points. The result panel still reports the distance to the centre.
Speed
The speed bonus is small on purpose. Fifty points out of a thousand means that spending an extra half minute to be sure you have the right country is nearly always worth it. The timer matters more in duels and the Battle Royale, where an opponent is waiting.
Wide view
Zooming in gives away clues: coastlines, rivers, urban sprawl. The wide-view bonus rewards committing to a guess from higher up. You do not have to stay at orbit height — you simply collect less of this bonus the further you zoom in before you answer.
Hints
Where a question offers a hint, each hint you use costs 15% of the points you earned on that question. A hint on a question you were going to miss anyway is cheap; a hint on one you knew is expensive.
How a total is used
A daily run adds up five questions (maximum 5,000). Your daily scores form the weekly leaderboard. In ranked duels the score of a round is compared with your opponent's and the difference becomes damage — see game modes — so there the margin matters more than the total.